The Mensheviks (sometimes called MenshevistsRussian: меньшевик[1][2]) were a faction of the Russiansocialist movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) between Julius Martov and Vladimir Lenin, leading to the party splitting into two factions, one being the Mensheviks and the other being the Bolsheviks. The dispute originated at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization. Martov's supporters, who were in the minority in a crucial vote on the question of party membership, came to be called Mensheviks, derived from the Russian word меньшинство (minority), whereas Lenin's adherents were known as Bolsheviks, from большинство (majority).[3][4][5][6][7] Neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the congress. The split proved to be long-standing and had to do both with pragmatic issues based in history, such as the failed revolution of 1905, and theoretical issues of class leadership, class alliances, and interpretations of historical materialism. While both factions believed that a proletariat revolution was necessary, the Mensheviks generally tended to be more moderate and were more positive towards the liberal opposition and the dominant peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary party.[8][9]

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At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in August 1903, Lenin and Martov disagreed, first about which persons should be in the editorial committee of the party newspaper Iskra, and then about the definition of a "party member" in the future party statute.[10] Lenin's formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the party's organizations, whereas Martov's only stated that he should work under the guidance of a party organization. Although the difference in definitions was small, with Lenin's being slightly more exclusive, it was indicative of what became an essential difference between the philosophies of the two emerging factions: Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters, whereas Martov believed it was better to have a large party of activists with broad representation.

Martov's proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates (28 votes to 23).[10] However, after seven delegates stormed out of the Congress – five of them representatives of the Jewish Bund who left in protest about their own federalist proposal being defeated[10] – Lenin's supporters won a slight majority, which was reflected in the composition of the Central Committee and the other central Party organs elected at the Congress. That was also the reason behind the naming of the factions. (It was later hypothesized that Lenin had purposely offended some of the delegates in order to have them leave the meeting in protest, giving him a majority. However, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were united in voting against the Bundist proposal, which lost (41 to 5).[11]) Despite the outcome of the congress, the following years saw the Mensheviks gathering considerable support among regular social democrats and effectively building up a parallel party organization.

In 1906, at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, a reunification was formally achieved.[12] In contrast to the Second Congress, the Mensheviks were in the majority from start to finish; yet, Martov's definition of a party member, which had prevailed at the First Congress, was replaced by Lenin's. On the other hand, numerous disagreements about alliances and strategy emerged. The two factions kept their separate structures and continued to operate separately.

As before, both factions believed that Russia was not developed enough to make socialism possible and that therefore the revolution which they planned, aiming to overthrow the Tsarist regime, would be a bourgeois democratic revolution. Both believed that the working class had to contribute to this revolution. However, after 1905, the Mensheviks were more inclined to work with the liberal bourgeois democratic parties such as the Constitutional Democrats, because these would be the "natural" leaders of a bourgeois revolution. In contrast, the Bolsheviks believed that the Constitutional Democrats were not capable of sufficiently radical struggle, and tended to advocate alliances with peasant representatives and other radical socialist parties such as the Socialist Revolutionaries. In the event of a revolution, this was meant to lead to a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, which would carry the bourgeois revolution to the end. The Mensheviks came to argue for predominantly legal methods and trade union work, while the Bolsheviks favoured armed violence.

Some Mensheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined legal opposition organisations. After a while, Lenin's patience wore out with their compromising and in 1908 he called these Mensheviks "liquidationists".

With the monarchy gone, many social democrats viewed previous tactical differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks as a thing of the past and a number of local party organizations were merged. When Bolshevik leaders Lev Kamenev, Joseph Stalin and Matvei Muranov returned to Petrograd from Siberian exile in early March 1917 and assumed the leadership of the Bolshevik party, they began exploring the idea of a complete re-unification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the national level, which Menshevik leaders were willing to consider. However, on April 3, 1917, Lenin and his deputy Grigory Zinoviev returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland and re-asserted control of the Bolshevik party by late April 1917, taking it in a more radical direction. They called for an immediate revolution and transfer of all power to the Soviets, which made any re-unification impossible.

In March–April 1917, the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberal Russian Provisional Government. After the collapse of the first Provisional Government on May 2, 1917 over the issue of annexations, Tsereteli convinced the Mensheviks to strengthen the government for the sake of "saving the revolution" and enter a socialist-liberal coalition with Socialist Revolutionaries and liberal Constitutional Democrats, which they did on May 4, 1917 (Old Style). With Martov's return from European exile in early May, the left wing of the party challenged the party's majority led by Tsereteli at the first post-revolutionary party conference on May 9, but the right wing prevailed 44–11. From then on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution of 1917.

With Mensheviks and Bolsheviks diverging, Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from exile in Europe and United States in spring-summer of 1917 were forced to take sides. Some re-joined the Mensheviks. Others, like Alexandra Kollontai, joined the Bolsheviks. A significant number, including Leon Trotsky and Adolf Joffe, joined the non-factional Petrograd-based anti-war group called Mezhraiontsy, which merged with the Bolsheviks in August 1917. A small but influential group of social democrats associated with Maxim Gorky's newspaper Novaya Zhizn (New Life) refused to join either party.

This 1917 split in the party crippled the Mensheviks' popularity, and they received 3.2% of the vote during the Russian Constituent Assembly election in November 1917 compared to the Bolsheviks' 25% and the Socialist Revolutionaries' 57%. The Mensheviks got just 3.3% of the national vote, but in the Transcaucasus they got 30.2%. 41.7% of their support came from the Transcaucasus. In Georgia, about 75% voted for them.[13] The right wing of the Menshevik party supported actions against the Bolsheviks, while the left wing, the majority of the Mensheviks at that point, supported the Left in the ensuing Russian Civil War. However, Martov's leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the right wing of the party, resulting in their press being sometimes banned and only intermittently available.

The Mensheviks opposed war communism, and in 1919 suggested an alternative programme.[14] During World War I, some anti-war Mensheviks had formed a group called Menshevik-Internationalists.They were active around the newspaper Novaya Zhizn and took part in the Mezhraiontsy formation. After July 1917 events in Russia, they broke with the Menshevik majority that supported continued war with Germany. The Mensheviks-Internationalists became the hub of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (of Internationalists). Starting in 1920, right-wing Mensheviks-Internationalists emigrated, some of them pursuing anti-Bolshevik activities.[15]

Menshevism was finally made illegal after the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. A number of prominent Mensheviks emigrated thereafter. Martov went to Germany, where he established the paper Socialist Messenger and, in 1923, died. The Messenger moved with the Menshevik center from Berlin to Paris in 1933 and then in 1939 to New York City, where it was published until 1965.[16]

^The trial of the Mensheviks: the verdict and sentence passed on the participants in the counter-revolutionary organization of the Mensheviks. By Antonov-Saratovsky, Soviet Union. Prokuratura. Centrizdai, 1931.